Siri delays, Health delays, and Apple Creator Studio limits on the AppleInsider Podcast

Hello, and welcome to the Apple Insider Podcast. This is your host, Wesley Hilliard speaking. I'm joined once again by William Gallagher, and we're going to be talking all kinds of, you know, doom, gloom, death, and destruction over at Apple. But before we get there, I want to thank our sponsors, CleanMyMac by MacPaw, Squarespace, Masterclass, and Nordstellar. If you don't want to hear about ads, there is an ad-free version of the show. You get it through Patreon or the premium version of our podcast in Apple Podcasts, and that gets you an ad-free experience and a bonus show at the end. It's usually anywhere between 20 minutes to an hour, depending on how much we have to say on the subject. But today we're going to be talking about the App Store. One of the topics of the show is going to be about how Epic's been kind of getting this free ride through this injunction that happened in the United States government and forcing Apple to basically collect nothing for external payments. Other countries are asking for that kind of stuff as well. So we're going to talk about, can Apple fix this whole dramatic situation? And how would they do that? And we're going to get into that in Apple Insider Plus. But first, there's a lot going on. William, how are you this week? upset miserable confused all of those things uh partly about most things we're going to talk about now really including i'm going to say siri and i i have a sense just from what we've said in the past that i am vastly more disappointed by rumored delays in this than you are because previously you've been expecting the iphone fold to suddenly be uh pushed away and i've been fearing Siri being pushed away and now being told that's it might come one day. I might be exaggerating there. Otherwise, very cheery. How are you? So this news is pretty odd. All right. I was digging through it yesterday. This is Bloomberg Markerman, internal anonymous sources. And there's a lot and a little here. so first off these we have to set up the scene um if you we have to put on your bloomberg goggles and look at the world as they do and see the death and destruction occurring at apple and they're they have four people working in the ai division everyone's quit uh tim cook is just scratching his head uh playing video games in his office and nothing's getting done anymore and Nobody knows what they're doing. And AI is taking over the world and taking us to the moon and Mars. And here's Apple, just basically the worst company on earth. Right. So we've set the stage and, and basically nobody knows what they're doing and they are going to have to give up on Siri yet again and delay. Now. Okay. I'm going on too long. the story seems to be that from what German has gathered from these anonymous sources is that some features are going to possibly be pushed back to 26.5 or 27. That on its face doesn't look great, especially when you look at the specific features he's calling out. And he says in the report that the personalized features from Siri and the app intent system both are not working as intended. That is the whole system, William. That's exactly what I'm waiting for, yeah. Yeah, so there's nothing else to discuss. So this whole thing, though, if you read, you have to read pretty far into the story, but where is it coming from? And the core of the complaint is, and I have a direct quote, Siri doesn't always properly process queries or can take too long to handle requests. here though is if you look at the time frames in question and i found a few maybe maybe there's one that said yesterday i don't know but the frames that i found was according to people interacting with the assistant in december or jan or january as as recently as january william i don't know if you know this but internal builds are tricky they're full of bugs they have a lot of flags turned on um the systems aren't really being stress tested properly because they're not public they're calling to temporary like scaffolding built around a system right a lot of times apple has to release something just so they can test it properly so okay so first off this the internal conditions at apple are being told to us by someone who clearly wants to leak something who has an axe to grind whatever german source is they're clearly unhappy unhappy that or they're getting told sunshine and rainbows and it's going through this garbage filter and getting this doom and gloom at the other end we don't know exactly what's happening that's the problem with anonymous sources but anyway the point is we have sources we can't confirm from people who possibly have an axe to grind with details that could be months old about a system that is in beta with no public confirmation from Apple, and every single thing, including other reports from this publication, say that iOS 26.4 is going to have the new systems. So which is it? And how can we take this with any real confidence as factual, as real? Now, I'm not saying they made this report up, and I have no doubt that a lot of this is probably actually happening, that they are having some difficulty getting these things implemented, but that's only because the technology itself is non-deterministic and finicky, and Apple works in a world of deterministic values. And so this technology is directly contradictory to what they do in the first place. So I can see how there's going to be some snags, but what I'm reading and what is being reported seems to be completely opposite worldviews. And that's what is so frustrating about these kinds of reports. Well, this is a roller coaster. I don't yet know whether to be relieved, although I feel like I can hope to be. Here's an example. Yeah. So one of the things he pointed out was the reason why we think there's going to be delayed features is that someone testing iOS 26.5 noted that there was a toggleable preview functionality for the personalization features. That's just a feature flag in beta testing. That is normal. Those feature flags are part of pre-built alphas throughout. In fact, Apple Insider reported on getting a hold of an iOS 26 internal release that had those feature flags available. They're toggles that go all the and some of them are like features for iOS 27, features for iOS 28. Like they're there because it gives the developer the chance to toggle those features and test them independently or combine different features in different ways to see how they interact or conflict. So the presence of that toggle tells us nothing. It tells us nothing. My interpretation of this is, first off, it's not released. It's not public. Everything that's going to be testing these features is technically a toggleable feature flag until it releases. And it could just mean at the worst case scenario, Apple's going to release this as a quote unquote beta feature, and it's going to have a beta flag on it, even in the public release. But that doesn't mean it's not coming. So people can interpret this news however they want. And I've written it the way I intended to write it. It doesn't seem to actually indicate anything especially since nothing was announced in the first place so how do you delay anyway it's so it's so silly but hang on we have been promised and i think it was apple saying this that we would have the new improved aka fixed siri 2026 thank you uh just 26 they didn't say when nope okay only a week ago i was thinking it was getting further and further away and know. This thing of you said the same publication, Bloomberg has previously said basically everything is working. Some months ago, Apple was letting it known that everything is going fantastic. I think their line was better than we expected. I don't see a difference between them saying that and it's suddenly funny a fault and Bloomberg reporting that a fault has been found. I want to agree. Yeah, there's a way to square this circle. So basically what Apple has said, and you have to read everything they say specifically. They said that everything that we promised at WWDC in 2024 is coming, but way more advanced and way better than we ever imagined because of the work we've been doing. That is true. That doesn't speak to the condition of the internal testing or how well the implementation has gone. i mean i'm pretty sure the first iphone was not even really functional i mean the the the fact that the demo worked at all they were sitting backstage crossing their fingers praying and it was an abs an absolute miracle that it finished without everything just catching on fire this stuff happened crossing the fingers they were the entries have said they were drinking whiskey everybody was shot when their bit had worked yeah so yeah yeah so that's what i'm saying this is this is not abnormal now why and this this is a larger discussion and i don't want to beat up on anyone in particular but this is sadly the repeat conversation about apple a lot of times from this publication because they are the ones who consistently report this absolute like upheaval within Apple, and we never really see evidence of that. They just had their best quarter ever. The iPhone is more popular than ever. One in four smartphones on the planet Earth is an iPhone. iOS 26 is being adopted at a normal rate. But if you were to read only this publication and only them, it would sound like that they were going to go out of business any day. so why is there this dichotomy in coverage well look at what the stock market did when this article was published at 3 p.m apple stock dropped multiple points just before closing even though it was having a fairly positive day otherwise that is not by accident right bloomberg and at least as of information that we are aware of that was accurate obtained in 2013 right so that was a while ago but i don't see why they would suddenly change their ways and and if they had changed their ways why it wouldn't have been shared publicly in some way. But we know that Bloomberg has incentivized their reporters, including their tech reporters, that their bonuses are determined by how much the stock market moves when they hit publish. And that is why they hit publish. And within a half an hour, you can refresh the article and there will be a new snippet added. Apple stock moved so many points upon the publication of this piece. Okay. Bloomberg also sells access to their Bloomberg Turnable for an ungodly amount of money. So you can get their articles seconds before everyone else. So you can go buy or sell stock knowing that the purpose of their articles is to move the stock market as much as possible. So I, once again, ask everyone listening, it's not that the information is fake or made up or wrong but you have to read bloomberg with that knowledge knowing that they're going to color the information because i don't care if you're like this priest or whatever of an unbiased whatever you're going to be influenced by that concept. You're going to know anyway, but I don't want to get into it. It's just this report. I wanted to say more in the piece, but I had to, I wanted to keep my tone even. So it's just so clearly, right? The information that was provided, this is if we strip away the whole conversation and doom and gloom and murder, this is the story that was actually given to them from what I can tell. Hey, I'm an internal person at Apple. And as of December, people were seeing long return times with the new assistant. And January, they were having it accidentally fall back to ChatGPT unnecessarily. And it looks like there are feature flags for 26.5 for some of the features that were expected in 26.4. That's it. Okay. Right. So like, but taking that and turning it into all these things are delayed and Apple doesn't know what it's doing and the brain drain, right? Like it's maddening. And, and then to see every tech publication, all of our peers, everyone and the blogs run away with it. Now it's confirmed Siri is delayed. It's confirmed. Apple intelligence, Gemini deal is not happening anymore. It's bad. And Tim Cook's egg on his face and nobody knows what's going on anymore. Nothing is confirmed. The last thing I said in my article on this holds true here and we got to move on. We'll take it. You know what? Maybe it's all true. Maybe it's the worst thing on earth. And Bloomberg is the only one with the insight into the catastrophe that is Apple. And that will be somewhat made evident by what they announce when they announce it for iOS 26.4. Or they will release everything we thought and we're going to look back at this and say what was this story but the problem is is people's memory is short and they're going to forget all about it and continue citing this publication for every little detail and saying confirmed so let's judge this effort on its merits when it releases and go from there because it's so close to release now it's very silly that we're even having this conversation. I hope so. But either it's coming soon, like we thought this is nonsense, or it isn't. I feel like I could be reassured, but I'm not yet. I'll work on it. But okay. You said you need to read Bloomberg with that certain mindset. I suggest you don't read Bloomberg, but that's just a thought. Yeah, I mean, that's an option. It gets back to a different conversation we've had before of our publication being what it is. You can't necessarily stay out of the conversation because that's detrimental. If everyone's reporting on something and we're not, people are going to be like, well, I'm going to go to this other publication now because clearly you're out of the loop or whatever. That's why when we do report on these things, if I get to report it, I do my best to point out this is where the color is. This is the clear narrative creation versus this is the clear information because that's what you have to do. Strip away everything. And I understand that I have my own inherent biases too. We all do. There's no such thing as perfectly unbiased journalism without like having an entire research team and multiple points of view going over a paper, peer reviewing it, ensuring that it is middle of the road. A single person and a single editor at a publication with its own voice is not going to not have a bias. It's just not how this works. Human nature does not allow that. So that's a greater discussion because everyone's just always like, why don't you report the news without a bias? It's like, what are you talking about? Anyway. Someday we must hear an episode of Plus about peer review and I can just rant for an hour while you drink coffee or something like that. I've been through it. So anyway, yes, push us aside, William. Be reassured. Everything else is good, though, isn't it? Everything else is coming. I wish we could cease talking about Bloomberg, but we have another story. Days ago about Apple. I feel like this was a month ago, I swear. This came out, I guess, right after we recorded, so I don't think we got to cover it. So because I wrote it on a Thursday, so that means it was after we recorded. So you're killing me here. What is this? I think I've missed it. What are you building up to? Apple Health Plus, right? Is this the idea was that Apple was going to roll out this AI infused service where you have a conversation with some kind of coach or quote unquote. what was going around was AI doctor, but that's nonsense because Apple would not call it a doctor. That's just not going to happen. But you would ask it questions about your health or it would offer advice. And we knew that Apple had a team of professionals recording videos and writing research papers that the assistant would basically direct you to after getting to that result. Like, hey, if you're having trouble with this, this is a paper that is official research. Or here's a video of a guy explaining exactly what this means. So that way you're not actually, that way the end output is not an AI, but a human, again, we get back to that peer-reviewed thing. So all of that was happening. We were expecting some other integrations and stuff. But apparently, Eddie Q has stepped in and said, no, no, no, no. we need to change how this is going to be because the idea was it was going to be Health Plus, it was going to overtake Fitness Plus, it was going to be a paid feature put into Apple One or whatever. Now it's being viewed as actually we need to chop this up into smaller pieces, release it over time to ensure that it's working properly, and we're going to maybe not even to integrate it into a paid service or maybe it becomes part of a greater health system service right and i actually uh wrote a piece of my blog pontificating well i think health plus is a bad name fitness plus is also kind of a bad name uh but if we're combining the two systems together why not apple wellness plus that has this wider overview of the entire health ecosystem and I thought this was an interesting move by Q And I think that this is actually smart considering the terrible press that ChatGPT has gotten around its health integration and how if you keep asking it over and over again for a wellness assessment, it will give you different results every time because it's non-deterministic and that's how these things work. so i think apple's initiatives had some merit and i think that we're gonna like it's still gonna roll out it's just not gonna come out as a giant package that you pay for apple's apparently pulling that back and releasing it over time okay that's interesting but i'm far less concerned about delays that maybe that speaks to my general level of fitness and health but let's not go there william okay so still thinking about siri well i mean if you if you read the uh source story from bloomberg it's um everyone's dead and nothing's good and happy uh no okay well it's just it's just another one of those um things of like clearly apple doesn't know what they're doing and it's just it's so frustrating it really is because what i just said was the story they're reassessing how to release this unreleased product that they haven't announced and it's just like failure and doom and brain drain and it's just all that same garbage again and i'm just so confused by it we don't need to go on that tangent again but my point is i think an apple so tim cook you know everyone's like oh apple car was a failure and that was going to be his legacy or vision pro is a failure that was going to be his legacy once again i'm so tired of this though that word just hush um so finally what tim cook's real legacy is and what he's made clear since about, I don't know, 2014, is health. He has fundamentally turned Apple into a health company over the last decade. And Apple Watch is at the center of it. Fitness Plus is a part of it. I think that Apple increasingly getting involved passively, at the very least, in people's health lives will allow Apple to become a more intimate and integral part of everyone's lives, especially if we get to blood glucose monitoring. But what's really interesting here, though, is the facets, you know, that you can attach this to as well, right? There can be, Apple could have an official, like they have an Apple News podcast, they could have an Apple Health podcast, right? Offering different, you know, tips and interviews and stuff with people. They could offer, you know, sleep tones in Apple Music. They already have that, but like they could bring it under the umbrella of this new like wellness platform. We also heard about Apple wanting to get into directly logging meals through the health app. And I think that would be interesting with visual intelligence, where you summon visual intelligence, take a picture of a plate of food, and it automatically puts it into Apple Health for you. So I think a lot of this is really interesting. Apple could have cooking programs, right? That promotes healthy eating. There's so many ways. Like they could have a book club around this. There's so many ways that their ecosystem can touch on this. And I think we're only seeing the beginning. And once again, I look at this with a lot of excitement because I think Apple has a lot of power in this space and could do a lot of good for their users through this. This episode is brought to you by Clean My Mac by MacPore. MacPore's CEO has been a guest on the Apple Insider podcast before, and I have often talked about the firm's setup, but this time, you've got to let me enthuse about Clean My Mac. 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That's whether you're starting out, whether you're scanning your business up or whether you're doing what I'm doing and looking to radically shake up your ancient website. you get a free two-week trial to try out squarespace's cutting edge designs and every one of them is better than i've had before i mean every one of them kind of sport for choice there plus squarespace gives you everything you need to claim your domain showcase your offerings with a professional website grow your brand and get paid all in one place squarespace for example also makes it easy to add video so i make youtube ones but i should really have them on my own website too and squarespace can even help you monetize content like that by adding a paywall but then there's also there are email campaigns you or i could be using to promote what we do there are analytics right that you know what analytics are they tell you what is and isn't being read on your site but it's i've ignored this in the past because it's always been that kind of detail that it's been an amazing chore to find out and here with squarespace there it is listen just head to squarespace.com slash appleinsider for that free trial and then when you are ready to launch use the offer code appleinsider to save 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain and thank you to squarespace for supporting the apple insider podcast okay so uh still worried about siri not that fussed about health but quite intrigued about the food aspects of health okay right i'm bouncing up down like a trampoline today um there is one other thing that's kind of related ish and it touches on ai and doesn't everything else but this time i know about this um and possibly you don't the uh usage limits on apple creator studio do you know this story yes but see i've talked a lot already and i feel like the listeners want to hear your voice today so explain what's going on people queue up to listen to my voice it's it's quite embarrassing I go to the shops. I'm going to say, I just said I know about this, but I also need to start by confessing ignorance. There is a limit on how much AI you can use in Apple Creator Studio. So specifically, it's generating images, generating slides. So images in pages, keynote, or numbers, I suppose, slides in keynote, or what do you call it? Speaker notes in keynote. These are all generated by AI. They're all part of Apple Creator Studio. There's a limit on Amazon News. Yeah. In my ignorance, never entered my head that there would be any limit at all. I mean, I should have done. There are other things. But Apple does actually mention this. It just doesn't half bury it. In fact, Apple headlines, Apple Creator Studio, with a line about endless creativity, unlimited possibilities. And then way, way down, not even in the terms and conditions, but in the support pages, it goes, actually, there are limits. Unlimited is depending on your perspective on the situation. Well, we've talked about it a long time ago about how there are US cell companies that talk about unlimited plans that are anything but, and I just think that's... Do you think we have a lawsuit, William? Do you want to start a class action? I feel I cannot argue successfully that I am affected by an American carrier and since I'm living in the UK, but I'll back you all the way. I'll be right behind you in the distance. You know, they sued Red Bull for not giving you wings, so I think we have a case here. Seriously? Yes. No. Someone did. No. Okay. The American legal system is a joke. So the Apple Creator Studio thing, this is funny. It's actually even funnier because I knew this was a well-known thing for me because an image playground for the last year, I guess, for the last release, they added a chat GPT function. You can get maybe two images out of that thing before it's like usage limit hit. Oh, okay. This explains a lot because I use image playground once and thought this is utterly worthless. And then later, why is it in Final Cut Pro? But I'm not going to bother trying it. So, okay, extra reasons I should have known. Yeah, what's happening here is Apple has a free relationship with ChatGPT, OpenAI company, completely free. There's probably some back-end handshake going on, but apparently the system is allowing you to have user exposure. And I think the idea is, and this is where it gets into money, is just by having ChatGPT as a fallback option for both Siri, Image, Playground, these tools in Apple Creator Studio, it incentivizes users to upgrade to a paid plan because the no login free limit is basically nothing. You get a certain amount of credits. Apple doesn't define how many credits anywhere. You're not told this. All you're told is when you're run out. You're like, sorry, you've used up the amount of access you have for this day or for this hour. Please come back later um but if you sign in with your chat gpt account you get to use the tokens you've purchased and um now i'm not fully aware i'm sure whoever has been looking at this um so steve strutton smith or steve trotton smith uh he i presume trotton as in the second oh sorry Steve Troutensmith yes he he's the one who shared about this um I don't know there it could be a combination of things it could be a combination of Apple's queries are using way too many tokens which doesn't make any sense I don't know how logically that would happen like if you did the same task without Apple's interface like if you went directly to them would it use less tokens but why would like again logically that doesn't make sense or is it just that the amount of tokens you get is so small even compared to like the free plan when you're directly interfacing with chat gpt it's very limiting but yes i do think this is an incentive structure to pay chat gpt i can see that except um i actually as was running the story i tried it out the issue for me apart from my total ignorance that there were any limits at all um there is actually a way to check how much you've used and i use this to see i created one image in fact if you look at the apple inside dot com article you can see that what i actually created i asked for an image of the tardis in a field of bananas and who knows why but it did it and it took five percent of my usage for the whole of apple creator studio now apple you said it doesn't mention tokens because it never does It never says battery measurements. It just gives usage examples. In this case, Apple explicitly says that at a minimum, you should be able to generate 50 images. Now, I did this one for five. So really, I could do, I can't do the math, 25 maximum, 20 maximum. So that's substantially less. And the argument over here is, well, there are all sorts of things going on. Does that be a bug? I hope so. But there's also, the marketing's wrong. because Apple says, in that list of the minimum, it says you can create 50 presentations with up to 10 slides each. So that's 500 slides. But it will also do presenter notes for 700 slides. So it'll do 200 more than you've got. Asterisk, asterisk. Only if you use size 12 font, no images. I don't know. Yeah, this is just one of those things that it's, again, because it's a workaround in a system waiting for Apple to release its actual product. It's going to have a lot of weird stuff. I think this does sound like it's unintentional and should be fixable. But it's also kind of who cares because we're about to theoretically Apple intelligence is getting the Gemini version. Like it's Apple Foundation models that are now retrained, renewed, better. That has some help from Gemini, right? That's all going to release soon. and theoretically you won't need access to chat gpt anymore to perform these fairly straightforward tasks your on-device and private cloud compute versions of this new model should be more than enough and i'm sure apple can't give you know it's 2.5 billion active devices or i don't know how many are apple intelligence but some very significant portion they can't just give it to them for free forever because that would be insane. So I'm sure there will still be some sort of limitation, but because Apple's fully in control, if you're calling to private cloud compute, you're going to probably run into a usage limit somewhere. But if you're on device, it's infinite until your battery dies. So I think that will become very interesting very fast. Like how good are these on-device models? And like if you're on a Mac with a bunch of RAM and Apple Apple's running that new model. Like there's models you can download right now that can generate images like you described without needing to contact a server, right? So we're getting there. Well, I need to throw in that actually, well, at least in theory, we are paying for this because at least in theory, we're playing with a subscription for Apple Creator Studio. I think we're still at the stage where everyone's on the trial version and things. So I wondered about that. I didn't appreciate that difference how things could change with Gemini. And one of the reasons I looked into this at all was actually in the last few weeks, I can't remember when he said it, talking about Image Playground, you mentioned that image generation in Apple Creator Studio and the apps within that were significantly better. So I tried it and actually, Image Playground still seems like a joke, but I was really impressed with what I came up with in pages in Apple Creator Studio. So I could suddenly see me using it more than I ever imagined. And it's still kind of this weird place where if you're falling back on chat GPT or using their models through image playground, obviously that's going to be better. Apple's image playground model, though, like it's sketch and animation is better, but it's still, you know, ugly and terrible and virtually useless. But generative AI in general is like ethically questionable in so many different directions. I'm very curious what this looks like when we get the newer model and how easy it's going to be to manipulate it into making a Pokemon or something. I noticed that TARDIS is a copyright image and that they did it. But also, I used to think, yeah, I always think generative AI is ethically dubious, but it's also rubbish. So if it's ethically dubious and actually quite good, where do I now stand on this? But no, one thing about this move to Gemini, one thing I've noticed is the content hub in Apple Create Studio, all the generating images are not available in, say, Pixelmator Pro. And in fact, this thing of checking your usage, you can only do it in pages, keynote numbers. You can't in any of the others. Do you think that's going to change when Gemini gets involved? Well, I want to be clear once again, because I know this is annoying and confusing and semantics, but it is still not Gemini going to be running on your devices or in Apple's models. It's still Apple's foundation models. But I know what you're saying. I just wanted to be clear that we're still talking about Apple Foundation models. It's just the new version of that. I believe internally it's referred to as Apple Foundation models version 10 is what's about to come out. And the one expected in iOS 27 is version 11. So if we want to be distinct, I think we're currently on version 9, I suppose, if logically. um but anyway uh yes the i do think that we will see more of that kind of stuff in logic final cut and um pixelmator pro yeah uh but right now because of its limitations i mean pixelmator pro being what it is i could see saying generate me a you know animated drawing of a rose that is uh has a transparent background facing a 45 degree angle without a stem and it makes that for you so you can add that you know to your image right like i can see having that capability included um but also again getting back to generative properties and like pages, keynote, and, um, numbers, those are primarily used. Now, again, I know pages can lead to a book or, you know, whatever, but like pages is kind of like generating a report more than it is generating something that you can sell to make money. Keynote and numbers, same idea. It's more like a reporting platform. You're making things for your personal use or, again, a business use, but not for direct sale, more of a reference, right? That's what those products are for They working tools that like people aren paying you for your book report out of pages that kind of thing That kind of what I getting at I do know plenty of novelists who write in pages That's an exception to the rule, you know what I mean? Like, you know, people are more likely to use Scrivener is what I'm saying. But, like, I would hope that those novelists are also not using generative AI to write their books. But the point I'm trying to make is Pixelmator Pro, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, they're clear output commercial use in a lot of cases. Obviously, you can make a home video in Final Cut. You can record a personal ringtone in Logic, and you can make a meme in Creative Studio. I understand there's non-financial applicability there, but those are primarily tools that have the ability to be used for commercial purposes. And I feel like that might be a step too far, or maybe it's just not ready yet. We'll see what Apple does here, especially when we're talking about Apple Foundation models. Can they explain to us that they are trying to take an ethical approach? maybe they can somehow ease people's concerns by saying hey this image generation model is only able to create images because we trained it exclusively on paid content and um what is it called oh freely available like stuff right like and even then that probably won't satisfy people but i want apple to make this make sense or if they just release it and say here you go without really explaining where the model got its content from, then you can probably assume that it's an ethical mess underneath there. But I'm curious how they'll handle this. Yeah. So we got to move on from AI and this might be a bit more of a speed round for the back half of our notes because this was definitely an AI heavy episode, but none of these are particularly long conversation so we'll see how far we get in the last 25 minutes or so of the show so apple has this is going to divert into apple insider plus so i don't want to spend too much time here but this is where our idea for this week came from uh apparently a not i wouldn't say a coalition because it's not formal but 600 groups companies uh in japan have come together to complain that they don't get a free ride on their ecosystem. That's my words, not theirs. But basically, they look at what happened in the United States where the judge said, Apple, you're doing bad things, so we're going to punish you, basically, and did an injunction forcing Apple to not take commission on external linked purchases, giving Epic a pretty big win in their battle. Japan's looking at this saying, this is giving an unfair advantage to American developers selling in the United States. We want that advantage too. Oh, I see. Okay. I see the logic there. Yeah. The thing is, is this injunction is under debate. It's being challenged and it's also, a different court has stepped in and said it's outside the scope of the original um i forget the words laws have so many words but it's outside the original demands for apple that in the original ruling apple was told that it could charge a commission uh it's just and the so the injunctions saying that they can't take a commission is a direct like opposition to that so there's a lot of questionable legal nonsense going on here So Japan's developers saying, hey, we want this too, it's a little premature given that it's not legally viable and it's most likely not going to stick around. um but anyway i this brings up the larger topic of just what do what does apple owe developers what do developers owe apple and what what do regulators understand and not understand about this situation and i think it's a convoluted mess every day there's a new country stepping up and saying Apple, we want what you're doing in the EU here too. And then there's this big battle. The UK is asking Apple and Google to reform their systems to be a lot like the EU systems. We're seeing this over and over and over again. And Apple keeps coming out with these pushbacks and their legal arguments of this is all unfair. And we run our app store, we should get to choose how we run it and safety of the user. It's just exhausting. William, Where are you with this? You think Apple's in the, like, who's in the right here? Or is nobody winning? The thing is, I remember when software was hundreds of pounds per app. And when you would go into certain stores and you see them there, and you know the store took 30% at least. You know the transport, the logistics, the packaging. If a developer got away with 20% of the retail price, that was good. And so in comparison, this is nonsense. Apple gives you such. Big improvement. Apple does worldwide tax things, which is a massive thing for any small developer to do. So I think a free ride is completely unfair. And actually, I have no problem with the 30%. You've argued before that maybe it should be less, and I hear you, but I'm all right with it. I don't think 30% is the wrong number. I just think it's wrong as a universal number. I think these, I think this, especially the size it's gotten, and I think this applies to as even a decade ago, like 2015, 2016, Apple should have already been coming up with a new, more modern system. And this is what we're going to get into in Apple Insider Plus. So I don't want to say any more. You guys listened to the after show. Just wanted to share that this was happening. Nothing's changed. It's just they filed a complaint. We wrote about it. I thought it was an interesting story and it's what's promoting our after show content so stick around for that this episode of the apple insider podcast is brought to you by masterclass my absolute favorite online learning I was gonna say class but doesn't seem quite never seems quite the right word experience let's go with that masterclass it's this experience it it has online lessons in video and there's uh downloadable further content and every bit I've tried of it is just superb. But what makes me just delighted actually to get to talk to you about it is that Masterclass feels like having a personal conversation. A personal conversation in which the very best people you could imagine are telling you everything they know. Jodie Foss, Aaron Sorkin, James Cameron, Amy Poehler, and or maybe there are also there are others who, you know, they're equally at the top of their field, but that field requires a little bit more security. 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I wrote a story about my continuing frustration with Apple Music. um not again 10 out of 10 app love the service not really complaining on any of those fronts but if you decide that you want to like check out the latest pokemon jazz rendition that has popped up in your recommendations at the top of the list because it it knows that you've added that person to a playlist before and you click play you will now get recommended various soundtrack things and jazz renditions and things that are tasteful and fine but for the rest of time and you open your new music mix and your carefully carefully curated algorithm of alternative and r&b and rap and rock and stuff like that suddenly in the middle of all of this lyrical modern contemporary music is this quiet smooth jazz like it's it's a very jarring experience sometimes and then you know maybe your sleep sounds turned on a little too soon without your focus mode filter and now you're getting recommended clear raindrops over the mountain in your new music mix so you're suddenly you're listening to green day and the very next song is bird chirping and and it's just this is the most first world problem you could ever have but it is just so frustrating to me that i cannot then go and say never recommend this song or this genre ever again just period i get this on youtube actually it's a running gag with us here we watch a lot of youtube on app tv in the room and the top line on the app tv app is recommend the users and you can change that one of us will just try i looked up tractors the other day for no reason to see if that would ripple all the way through and actually for once it didn't but it's a matter you can always see which has been watching later and i i find that funny and it turns up different things but i have you said you liked apple music and i have an absolutely major complaint i discovered this week which is that my favorite michelle shock songs are not on it this is not good enough apple okay that I'm bothered about can you go to iTunes and buy them? yes I know why I'm less bothered by this because back when it was just iTunes I remember being on shuffle and going from I don't know Dar Williams or Susan Vega and crashing into Act 3 Scene 2 of Radio 4 dramatisation of Hamlet and stuff so I was used to the jar and I think Apple seems it smooths out things a bit better than that at least so yeah it's it's not all the time but like there's a discovery station and a your personal station so it's wesley hilliard station um even those will get infected right because the whole point of those stations is to kind of play a act as a dj and play like a collection of music that is recommended to you but also attempts to combine them in a way and put them in an order that makes sense. But the minute your algorithm has a reference to, again, video game soundtrack, music soundtrack, classical, or jazz, suddenly you're getting very jarring transitions and reaching for the skip button. And it's just, that's an algorithm problem. It should be more intelligent. My new music mix should be not all one genre, but it should, it should make sense as a playlist. Like I shouldn't be getting a new music mix that is a random assortment of different sounds that are completely discordant from each other. It should be a smooth transition all the way down. And then if you want, and that's the point of the chill mix, right? I don't mind having the chill mix be the, hey, you listen to rain sounds, jazz, and classical music. We're just going to pack it all in here. And then have your new music mix be the, here's all your contemporary music with lyrics and sounds, right? Like differentiate it that way, but the way it's laid out right now, that is not how it works. And I don't know if this needs, like personally, I want control and I know Apple's not the biggest fan of giving users direct control like that. So if you can't at least do that, just divvy it up a little bit better, right? Let me know for a fact that when I click my personal music station or discovery station, it will always be contemporary music. And then make a new station called your chill mix station or whatever, and let that one be non-vocals all the way through. And let the chill playlist always be non-vocal music and classical music, right? or let there be a classical music station recommended to you i think that would be awesome too that would be amazing actually but i know william but the thing is i i'm just thinking there used to be a workaround for this and i have no idea if it still works as i never tried it anyway but that you could rate certain star things as zero stars and others as five stars don't affect your algorithm at all all right they're just for they're for you and you can sort if you go into apple music you can sort them by star rating that's still there yeah i could never be bothered i like something or i don't but i don't think yeah yeah you can't do stars on mobile i think it's only on the desktop app but um on apple music though you can say favorite it add it to your library or suggest less a thumbs down button thumbs down does nothing though it It's a negative nudge towards that song, but it doesn't stop it from playing ever again. I never want to see Drake pop up in my playlist ever for any reason whatsoever. There is not a button anywhere in Apple Music that says, I delete Drake. There's no delete. You know what, Apple? We'll meet in the middle. Give me a delete Drake button. We're good. Did you notice that recently the favorites mix vanished and was renamed the Essentials mix? just in the last couple of months. Have you come across that yet? So I, honestly, Your Essentials, I didn't notice the name change, but the color is the same. So I just registered that. That was still my favorites list, but I didn't recognize that the name had changed. The reason I found it there is I will ask Siri to play my favorites mix, and it would come back saying, playing your favorites mix from October 2020. Why? Because apparently in October 2020, I really liked that week's favorites list, and I copied it into another playlist. But actually, I still like my taste from six years ago. So you can add, and I recommend everyone do this, Apple's made-for-you playlists. Add them to your library, and they get automatically updated just like any other curated playlist does. And you can also add your yearly playlists, your replays, and your all-time playlists. Add those to your library. I think that's important. You can keep the setting off. This is what I do. You can make it so it automatically adds all music in your playlist to your library, which, no, I don't want that. But you can add your playlist without adding the songs, and then when you play the playlist, you can then add the songs. I've actually been doing this thing since the beginning of the year. I've been going down my artists list alphabetically and viewing what albums I have of them. And first off, if I've never heard of them before and don't even remember why I added them, I just delete them. I might give them a listen. Like I'll give them a cursory listen to be like, what is this? Do I remember this? And then if it's like, oh, this is just some, like I was in the mood for this song. And now I can tell you that like, I don't care. So I'll delete them from my library. If it's a single, I have been deleting those as well. I'm just trying to clear some clutter. Not that I hate singles, but if it's in an album, I would prefer to have the album. So what I've been doing is I've been going through each artist, checking for incomplete albums, listening to the album in full, seeing if I even like it. And if, if I'm enjoying the album, I'll add the entire album and then favorite my favorite songs in it. and that way each artist essentially is basically only albums, maybe EPs, but just albums, all the way through, and I made it down to, I think, H so far in the alphabet. It's going to take a while. I have a lot of artists, but it's letting me clear it up. I think it's helping me steer my algorithm. I don't know if it's doing anything, but I like the idea of that kind of digital cleanup and there's there's so many places like i've never used the artist list before because it's kind of useless in its original form of here's just a random amalgamation of singles and things that you favorited like one song from this album is in your library like i'm trying to treat it a little bit more like i have a record collection and it's been interesting so far i think i might be a i promise there's a relevance here let me get to this very quickly i i've for goodness how long I've had a discoveries playlist and the definition of discoveries is something I'd never heard of before that I became really obsessed with for at least a couple of days that goes in and I never let myself remove them and I just checked I have 271 songs in there 18 hours or so and I love all of it but the most of the time I love it is when I driving and I will ask Siri to add something to my discoveries playlist or I will ask it to play the discoveries playlist The first time you ask, Siri goes, I can't find such a playlist. Do you want to create one? Or it plays you music that, I don't know, maybe the record label has discoveries in them. It's nothing obvious. The second time you say exactly the same thing, Siri works. And this comes back to I could cry at how Siri is worse than it used to be. And this feeds into my disappointment whenever I hear the improvement is delayed or so. I'm going to grumble about this quietly. You don't need to listen to it. So we've got about five minutes to set a timer for this topic. It's going to be controversy corner. We were going to discuss some Discord stuff. Look, Discord is an app that lets people discuss video games with the original purpose, but now it's more of a social platform. Very popular with younger adults and teens. They're doing this age verification thing where every user is now treated as a teen by default. And they've confirmed that they're doing age verification through third parties. And they're going to discard all of your information upon confirming you're an adult. They're just using your ID or face video to mark you as one. It's all very bad and stupid. Apple has an API that would let you verify users' age ranges, but they're not using that for some reason. And we'll have to have an episode on age verification at some point, but this is all very annoying and stupid. Regulators are asking for it, kind of similar to the discussion we're going to have on Apple Insider Plus today of, like, regulators don't know what they're doing. And they're asking for things that are harmful to users. and now everyone's doing their own version of age verification and it's creating so many issues. It's very annoying and it can be causing problems for the kids who just want to use their apps as well. So anyways, we don't have time for Discord today. So we're going to jump into Controversy Corner for a few minutes. So if you don't like that, plug your ears, hit skip. Because again, I understand that we're tired of hearing the world being bad and sad and whatever. So you don't even have to skip for political reasons. It can just be a mood thing. So anyway, the FTC chair has written Apple a strong letter asking them to please consider taking a look at their terms of service and their algorithm to make sure that they are not purposefully manipulating their users into having a leftist worldview. Okay. yeah so basically the only reason i want to discuss this is because um everyone not everyone conservatives and their outlets are talking about this and the president also shared it on his personal social media platform of look at this bad well this all comes from a uh watchdog see i don't know where these things come from is this just like a private group of people with a bunch of money and nothing better to do is that what watchdogs are i've seen this term all over the place like eu privacy watchdog says this and it's like who are these people i think that's a small question big answer uh but okay anyway william you can uh write me a paper on that and get back to me later no so okay i'll get peer-reviewed first but yeah i have an idea of what watchdogs are i'm being facetious but anyway this conservative watchdog their mission statement is we're gonna point out censorship on the internet of right-wing views that's our whole job we're going around the internet and finding where conservatives are being censored and we're gonna point it out and share it with your legislators and the you know and their most recent quote-unquote study was that apple news uh pushes leftist views onto their users and the their methodology for the study now tell me what you think of this william was every day for two weeks in january they checked apple news at 10 30 a.m to note what the apple news top stories section was promoting and then for the second half of the month they checked at 8 30 a.m and they found during that period of time that there were zero conservative news outlets shown in that widget. Does that sound concerning to you? Does that sound like an issue? Like, is there a methodology flawed? Like, what's going on here? Well, given that I'm forever seeing right-wing UK publications and I've blocked them all, I feel this is an inadequate study, at least. It's bad in a lot of ways. First off, they're only checking out for the morning edition. I I guess that their idea is people only check the news in the morning or around lunchtime or something. I don't really – It's an incredibly old-fashioned view, but it used to be like that. Yeah, I don't know what the purpose of their specific time slot is. But Apple News Top Stories and Apple News Spotlight, both Apple-branded portions of Apple News, the rest of the app is an aggregator where it's algorithmic-based and based on what the user follows. so there's actually very little editorial content it is prominently displayed the first thing you see when you open apple news and go to the today tab is apple news top stories so that is fair it i believe apple has an independent editorial group at the company that runs the editorial side of apple stuff like apple news today podcast the editorials written for apple or the app store stuff like that, but they also send out an email newsletter and have, um, their own publication things. Like they will do entire, like, I guess they're linking to these stories or maybe buying these. I'm not entirely sure how that works, but there, there's an Apple news spotlight section called Apple news spotlight and you open it up and it is an article from Apple news spot. So anyway, they have their own editorial thing. And so this is kind of getting into first amendment. I don't know how the FTC is allowed to say anything about an independent editorial board publishing news to Apple. So obviously that won't fly. But their argument being a terms of service violation because Apple News is pushing CNBC and I don't know what our leftist news. I just don't look at news that way. I just read the news. I don't know. Anyway, it's also silly. if you actually look at the top news section um and scroll you will see the new york times not new york times the wall street journal editorial page which is a known uh conservative leaning uh section of the newspaper uh there's also fox news fox business and there's sometimes like i can't remember it's at the hill i don't again i don't really know these things so well. This isn't my world. But anyway, very clearly an Apple News top stories has been promoted there. Just maybe not at 1030 AM, I guess. So the thing was flawed in its face. Clearly Apple isn't just promoting leftist views. They have many centrist view accounts left leaning, right leaning. But the thing is, I also found, because I did a little digging, the website that labels these um news organizations as left right center whatever their list of the more right leaning like right extreme publications almost none of them are on apple news period like you can't get breitbart on apple news thank god so but this is this study pointed out we were looking for things like fox news breitbart xyz and almost everything they listed was not even in Apple News. But isn't that an argument that Apple centered them at source? No, because that's just those companies aren't publishing in Apple News. Apple News isn't gathering. I don't know how people if people know this, you have to choose to put things in Apple News. It is not an RSS feed. It isn't gathering every piece of information from the web. You're presuming that these people have these publishers have chosen not to try this. But it could be that they did and Apple said no although I imagine we'd hear about it if that yeah that's an unknown my understanding is is they just aren't on Apple News because I feel like that would be a very obvious story we would have heard about that we would have written about that because like they would have complained we tried to publish Apple News and they took us down free speech right so I and there are right-leaning things like there's some pretty nasty ones in there that I was when I was researching this so it's not like Apple doesn't allow these platforms to exist there they're just not publishing there predominantly left-leaning news outlets use apple news it's a popular news aggregator it's a default add up on the iphone people use it um i i was checking my emoji game listing and i am ranked like 16 000 people apparently use this thing um so games right use right in america thanks so so my point my point is is it's all very frustrating and silly and now people are like look tim cook failed to woo trump again there he's gonna have to wave another hundred billion dollars in the air to make this go away this is a random action taken by a trump appointee um based on a study that is flawed on its face i don't think anything's going to happen. No actual action was taken. If a lawsuit begins, great, we'll cover it. Nothing's happened yet. I don't think, and Cook, this is also days after Cook has internally said, we're going to be doing more lobbying for immigration policies and our dreamers. So maybe this is kind of a retaliation of like, don't poke the bear. We're going to come after you. this tit-for-tat administration is getting really old. I mean, the FTC is already, I don't know if they've publicly said this, but there are actual, like, senators writing the FTC saying they need to investigate the Apple Music halftime show. Yes, I heard about that. And it's stupid. I want to say it here just so it's said. Bad Bunny has lyrics that is explicit and sexual content oriented. And some of the songs he sang at the halftime show were the songs with that lyrics. But like other halftime performers who also have those kinds of songs, he did not sing those portions of those songs during the halftime show. It was a PG, maybe PG-13 because there was some shaking butts on the stage, right? But that is it. He didn't curse and say sexually oriented things explicitly during the show. Maybe there was innuendo. I don't know. And so it's very funny that they're like, we need to investigate them for violating, uh, FTC guidelines and, and during a cable television broadcast for families, they, you know, whatever, like it's, it's such garbage. It's clearly targeted, but, um, from an American citizen performing at the Superbowl, I mean, they didn't go after, uh, all those performers from Canada when we had them coming over here. But anyway. Finally, finally, we're out of Controversy Corner. I can't talk about this anymore. My blood pressure is going up. So closing up the show, because we have now officially hit the one-hour mark, and William is shaking his fists at me. Me? I'm getting a little hungry, but that's my problem. We've just had an air fryer delivered, and shortly before we started talking, i downloaded the app for it and i am dying to try the app possibly more than the airfire but you know wasn't going to mention any of that you dragged it out of me you were saying i'm also hungry so the we i mentioned earlier in the show that there are indications that apple it has one in four smartphones on earth basically it that's pretty crazy um considering that my question for you on this topic is, do you miss Apple being the underdog? Do you like, how do you feel about Apple as a dominant player, a market leader? Oh, funny six. I remember thinking during what, 80s, 90s, when I first started working on magazines, in the magazines, we knew Macs were what you needed, but around it, people going, done away doing that. And Quark Express pulled out and all these things. These days, Apple, yes it's comparatively dominant but i get quite a bit of criticism from people uh who are much more android and pc fans for it why are you spending all that money over the old arguments for it and i think that's because um macs and particularly iphones are not as common here as android uh is plus i work with a lot of gamers um actually you're a gamer and you don't complain about the mac being rubbish because it doesn't play games but they do i see your point okay yeah i wouldn't buy a windows computer either because i don't want to be within 20 feet of one but um so i put yourself through it now i've been there but hang on isn't there a statistical question here uh one in four are smartphones but the other uh three in four are they all sorts of different are they not just all Android. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, if you're talking iOS Android, that is the case. Apple is still, iOS is still the clear minority globally and in the US. Now, US, it's a little bit closer to 50-50. I think Apple's somewhere in the 40s percentage-wise. Maybe, I think it's sometimes gotten close to, if not crossed, that 50% line, and we've reported on it, but it's still, like, at that line globally it's more in the 20s um samsung is next in line a little higher like 27 versus apple's like 25 or so um but then yeah then it's just a hundreds of different other vendors uh all running android after that um android's a very big uh pot so it's interesting it's not that apple is the majority or anything they're not they haven't you know they're not 50 of the market and that they don't have they're a duopoly in the fact that it's ios and android but there's still a minor a big minority in that duopoly so i i think regulatory wise they still have an advantage in some places a disadvantage in others uh it's interesting though because they continue to grow even with spotify i think in the united states apple's made significant ground with apple music. Um, their, their Apple music halftime show was the top watched Superbowl. I think like it's, it's up there on the list. It, it, in the, since Apple music took over, uh, the Superbowl, they've broken viewership records each year consecutively. And this one broke yet another viewership record. And, um, it's drawing people to the platform because Apple music is, you know, not only just promoting the Superbowl, but hosting interviews and all of these playlists and content and making it really easy for people to get involved. So it's grown quite a bit, whereas Spotify has kind of stagnated. They've infected every phone they can with their free service, and they've gotten every dollar they can from their premium service. That's why, again, they're struggling to make money because they've milked it for what it's worth. I believe they're pivoting to – I saw something the other day they're offering that's insane. Books can be built for Spotify, yes. Yeah, it's stupid. I don't understand. Just stop it. Anyway, Spotify is still vast majority around the world. But in the US, Apple is creeping up there. They're not quite half. It's more like 40% maybe. Apple's 24% globally. But the fact that they're moving up that list at all is kind of impressive because the Spotify users I know, even on iPhone, are really adamant about their Spotify. But more and more people are jumping ship. And we're talking a lot about Apple Music today. The 2026 playlist is available now. I think that's pretty cool. You get that updated weekly for the whole year. So you can go to your Apple Music app and get that now. I always like seeing how that's developing over the year as well. Yes. But we're going to close up and get to the Apple Insider Plus. So first, before we do, you can leave a review on Apple Podcasts. We'll read it here. It doesn't matter if it's one stars, five stars. We like sharing your guys' critiques and compliments and everything like that. Today, we have one from mhopman31, five stars, without a doubt, the best podcast on Apple rumors and future products. Great content coming from Weston William, excites me. Every time when a new episode comes out, listening saves time from scrolling through social media to find answers about the latest news on Apple. Keep it up, gentlemen. So thank you again very much for the kind review and the five star rating. I wish I'd heard that at the start. I would have, you know, come here, tied it up properly. everything that's lovely thank you yes you can get those read here if you leave that on apple podcasts of course like there are other systems other places you can leave us to our ratings i believe on overcast but we don't really check those um of course if you want to reach out to us directly you can find me wes at appleinsider.com uh that's email i like to read those i get i reply to those as quickly as i can usually um if you send one and i don't respond it's usually because it went to junk and I never saw it. So I apologize for that. Uh, my filtering can be pretty aggressive. You can also reach me Hilly tech, Hilly dot tech at blue sky, Hilly tech on Macedon. Um, I also Hilly tech, uh, blog, all those things. You can find me those places. It's pretty easy to get ahold of me. Um, been seeing people trickling on blue sky lately, and that's always fun. And William, where can people find you? Well, actually you can usually find me over at hillytek.com because i was going to say if you didn't mention your blog i was going to i've been reading and enjoying that uh but then for my own stuff i am william at appleinsider.com or on youtube as 58 keys very explicitly for writers who use apple gear uh that one but this is great community building around it and having a fun time and so much to talk about at the moment 58 keys is always a good one i like that you found that niche uh with mac and writing and everything. And even if I'm not a Mac, you can still get some tips out of it. Yeah. But that's it for our show. I want to once again, thank our sponsors, CleanMyMac, BuyMacPaw, Squarespace, Masterclass, and Nordstellar. We're going to dive into Apple Insider Plus now. We're going to discuss Apple's regulatory issues involving the App Store. Can it be fixed? Can Apple fix it? Where is this all going? Stick around for that if you are a premium subscriber. Of course, you got the show ad free through, uh, Patreon or Apple podcasts as a paid member. If not, we will talk to you guys next week.